All this stuff is from the Internet, so it has to be true. Jimmy Nichols was born in 1905. He dropped out of high school and earned money as a semi-pro boxer. One very early morning in 1929 he was on his way home from an all-night craps game, and he fell asleep while driving. He crashed into a moving train, and lost his right arm as a result. He told the cops and his insurance company he was hurrying to get to church and didn't see the train coming.

While wandering around aimlessly one day, he found a $10 bill on a golf course. He assumed this was a sign from God, so he bought a set of clubs and took up golf. The clubs were right-handed clubs, so he played from the left side as a two-armed right-hander would. He got pretty good at regular golf, and hit his drives an average of 250 yards. He also learned trick shots, and sometimes earned money by putting on exhibitions.

One year he won the National Left-Handers Golf Association Tournament, but was denied the prize money because he played right-handed. He had 17 aces in his career, including one on a 336-yard par four. He was run out of Texas sometime during World War II because he rigged a Calcutta at a country-club tournament.

Later on, he got a job on the Spalding Advisory Staff. He was the recipient of the Ben Hogan Award in 1962. On a USO Tour of Vietnam in 1971 representing Spalding, he, with two LPGA pros, gave a clinic at a firebase north of Saigon. Incoming mortars brought the clinic to an early end, and he and the two ladies were helicoptered out, escorted by gunships.

There is a Baltimore Sun photo showing Jimmy arriving at Mt. Pleasant for the 1952 Eastern Open. Neither Golf World nor the PGA Magazine lists the scores of ALL competitors that year, so I don't know what he shot at that year's tournament (it looks like the cut was 151). In the 1953 tourney he shot 78 and 80, and missed the cut.

Jimmy Nichols became the head pro at Westover Golf Course in Connecticut. He was inducted in the PGA Connecticut Section Hall of Fame in 2012. Various sources claim he played in the National Open, the Masters, and the PGA Championship, but that seems a stretch. He died of cancer in 1987.